Nightmares & Dreadweaving

highpriestness:

I call myself a Nightmarist, I call my practice Dreadweaving, but I’m still practicing. Note that this is a specific style of cursing, based directly after the lore surrounding Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, and thus I’ve also tagged this as Pop Culture.

As someone who works with fear, anxiety, shadow, nightmares, divination, dreams, and the astral, I work it all together to make spells and curses alike.

I will speak of my version of Astral Travel through Lucid Dreams, my version of Thoughtforms, and how I utilize these into Dreadweaving, as well as alternatives to Dreadweaving.

Astral, Dreams, & Thoughts

Lucid Dreaming

Lucid Dreaming is my typical method of Astral Travel – the main problem being I need to train my memory to actually remember what happened. The amount of times I’ve communicated with entities and lost their words is too many, and practically embarrassing. 

When you dream, dream of what you want, create stories in your mind until you fall asleep, and attempt to keep control of those stories. When you Lucid Dream, have a key sign that you are dreaming. 

Here is a psychological article that talks about Lucid Dreaming. I’ll go ahead and quote a few things, to:

This is done on waking in the early morning from a dream. You should wake up fully, engage in some activity like reading or walking about, and then lie down to go to sleep again. Then you must imagine yourself asleep and dreaming, rehearse the dream from which you woke, and remind yourself, “Next time I dream this I want to remember I’m dreaming.”

Before you go to bed, also try to sort of daydream with your eyes closed. Just think and make up stories in your head, but make to focus on small details and keep them from getting ahead of your thoughts. Try to keep control of those stories while you fall asleep and dream.

Another method:

A second approach involves constantly reminding yourself to become lucid throughout the day rather than the night. This is based on the idea that we spend most of our time in a kind of waking daze. If we could be more lucid in waking life, perhaps we could be more lucid while dreaming. German psychologist Paul Tholey suggests asking yourself many times every day, “Am I dreaming or not?” This sounds easy but is not. It takes a lot of determination and persistence not to forget all about it. For those who do forget, French researcher Clerc suggests writing a large “C” on your hand (for “conscious”) to remind you (Tholey 1983; Gackenbach and Bosveld 1989).

Writing a “C” on your hand can be very, very helpful, especially for those who may have trouble discerning reality. There are tiny things in dreams we may not be able to completely control, such as moving letters trying to read in our dreams or “broken” reflections. Remind yourself you are dreaming, that you are in control of your dream, and take it where you want to go.

Constant practice at night when you go to sleep, or in the early mornings on days off/weekends can help you develop the ability. You can also do exercises to create your own dream landscapes, buildings, and so on.

Astral Travel

When you Lucid Dream, create a door, or pool, a walkway, something that can take you to the Other, to the Astral, to another Plane. Practice this in your dreams.

When you dive into the other plane, explore, search, learn from this plane intimately before you can move on to the next. Sometimes it can take weeks, but patience is, of course, a virtue. 

In Astral, we are capable of visiting other people, though they may not see, hear, or interact with us. Be careful with how far you go, but this is where, I believe, Dreams are strongest rather than pure meditative Astral Travel. You can simply create a door to your preferred location and go through it. 

Explore all you like, but soon practice to where you may enter your target’s manifested psyche, private space, home, room, etc, even if this is a proxy. This is where you can invade them, curse them, and weave dread into their thoughts, dreams, and lives.

Thoughtforms

Creating thoughtforms is similar to creating doorways. Practice on it. Focus on your creation  in the Astral or in your Dream. Create it over and over and over until you perfect it. It can be a simple ball at first.

When you are capable of creating a thoughtform of an object or creature, you can create a manifested spell within the Astral. 

When you dive into another plane, you may imagine that you are near or within a person’s thoughtspace. Here is where you may create creature thoughtforms to invade their spaces.

Likewise, one may also practice Dreadweaving by weaving threads of black into the threads of your target’s psyche. 

When you Dreadweave, you create the dread you want – in the Astral or in a Dream it can be a “physical” creature of object – spiders, ladders, mirrors. Or, it can be an entity of smoke and smog, as such depicted in Ashiok’s Adept or Nightmarish End. The Dread is to be woven, like the words of wyrd or the spinning of threads into the psyche of a person. Grant them your nightmares, bad luck, terror, anxieties, and poisons. 

Physical Weaving

When Weaving Dread into someone’s life, one ma physically weave threads or incense/oil/candle smokes.

Physical Weaving is taking your already-known witchcraft knowledge and applying it to Dread as a curse, though, these methods to me dont seem as potent as literally Astral and Lucid traveling to fuck up your opponent’s psyche as directly as possible. 

Threads & Spinning

Taking white or light-colored threads and interweaving them with dyed threads is one way to accomplish physical Dreadweaving. 

Your dyed threads can be dyed a number of ways dependent on your will and intent. Weave war into their lives by anointing or dying threads with war water and blood. Weave fear and terror by anointing with nightshade berries or shadow water. Create potions of dread, fear, and toxicity to dye and anoint your threads as you weave them.

Spinning different colors together creates a strong bond of Dread into the life of an individual.

Smoke & Scent

Create your own mix of scents and burning items to place into an oil warmer, alongside oil. Burn on charcoal your picked herbs, incense, or spices. Thread the smoke with your fingers in light circular motions as it comes out to spin the smoke into a concentrated energy of Dread. 

Create candles by melting wax and adding your specified herbs, incense, and other such things into it to burn. 

Water & Potion

Shadow Water works wonders as an added creation.

Create potions as you would, typically. Boil, smash, burn and add your ingredients together, but make them bitter, disgusting, and undrinkable. Do not be afraid of rot, death, and poison.

Do not drink these mixes yourself, they are the concentrated Dread you are mixing into curse jars and potions. Thicker creations of berries, blood, and clay hold for a long while. Shadow and War Waters mixed with debris, flotsam and jetsam, oils, and even the spools of your created threads hold the Dread inside.